december 6, 2023 nyc office of the mayor news
dr. daniel messina, president and ceo, richmond university medical center: good morning. welcome to richmond university medical center. i'm dr. daniel messina, president and ceo.
it is a distinct pleasure on behalf of our chair of the board, tim harrison, and our entire organization to welcome mayor adams, attorney general james, borough president fossella, assemblymember pirozzolo, assemblymember tannousis, assemblymember rajkumar, district attorney mcmahon, and jessica, our senator. did i see her just come in? welcome. and to each of you here today.
richmond university medical center has served our community for nearly 120 years, providing a full spectrum of healthcare services. and we are also staten island's leading provider, so this topic today is near and dear to our hearts. behavioral health service is really a core service here for children and adults. and now i'd like to introduce deputy commissioner avula. deputy commissioner?
executive deputy commissioner deepa avula, mental hygiene, department of health and mental hygiene: thank you. good morning, everyone. my name is deepa avula, and i'm the executive deputy commissioner for mental hygiene. i am also born and raised on staten island, and i've currently moved back to new york city and a current resident of staten island. i love this borough, and i love our city.
one of the things we know is that we are facing a major opioid crisis. we lost over 3,000 new yorkers in 2022 to this very devastating crisis that we're facing. the mayor has really challenged us in his care community action plan, a mental health plan for new york city to really focus and prioritize addressing this crisis.
we know that this is a complex problem. when we say the number 3,000 often we can get inured to those numbers and just believe that they're numbers, but in fact, that's 3,000 lives that ended too soon, 3,000 families, 3,000 neighborhoods, 3,000 communities across our city that are affected. and we are very committed to ensuring that we are doing all we can to develop comprehensive solutions to address, again, what is a very, very complex problem.
that's what today's announcement represents. it represents our continued commitment to do all we can to address this issue. i want to thank the staten island electeds who've been very vocal, who've been very passionate, who've been very committed, who've really helped us frame the announcement that the mayor is going to share now. i welcome mayor adams to share an exciting announcement.
mayor eric adams: thank you so much. and really, you know, this issue of opioid overdose not only impacts staten island but we're really happy to also see that has traveled across the waters, assemblywoman from queens also joining our staten island electeds that are here. and right on time, we have the amazing district attorney joining us.
we recall speaking to the electeds that are here, there's one thing about staten island elected officials that is really impressive. when it comes to representing the borough after elections are over, they unite and they become one party, and that's the staten island party to represent the people of staten island.
and oftentimes we've stood side by side on these important issues. i was out here yesterday as well, and when we look at the development of your parks, the development of your infrastructure, your housing, you often see a bipartisan agreement on how we can do it together and represent the people of staten island.
i like to believe that i'm going to be a mayor that's going to be on staten island more than any mayor probably in the history of the city, because you're not a forgotten borough under this administration.
this issue has been an issue for sometime, and hats off to ag james — attorney general tish james — for seeing and battling to get the manufacturers that have raked in billions of dollars of the over use and over prescription of opioids and using those dollars to come back to local communities and using them through our h h hospital.
she could have stopped there, but because of the advocacy of the elected officials here, they clearly and rightfully pointed out that there was not an h h on staten island. and because of the creativity of understanding that the opioid epidemic does not end wherever the geographical boundaries of an h h hospital is located, it is throughout our entire city.
and because of that and the advocacy of your elected officials, we are now, through the dollars that were retrieved from these manufacturers, we will be delivering $12 million to staten island to go through your local community based organization. it is really disheartening to know that staten island represents five percent of the citywide overdose[s] that take place due to opioids and it hurts us all to see that we have a 12 percent increase from 2021.
this is a major, major crisis that we are facing. dr. vasan and his team are leaning into this crisis, and it is directly associated with the over-proliferation of fentanyl that has found its way into our lives of different backgrounds and different groups. 80 percent, over 80 percent of the deaths that are tied to overdose or overdoses, 80 percent you see the presence of fentanyl.
and it has swept across our entire country, but places like staten island, they have been hit extremely hard. and this money will go a long way. and you know, when you look at what the district attorney is doing in his project, hope program, this money can assist of getting out, giving people the support that they deserve.
over 2,000 people have been treated through this program. these are the types of innovative services we need, cross-pollination of ideas, breaking down the walls and barriers that prevent us from going after a common enemy — a common enemy of opioid — and all of the pathways that opioids finds itself in our communities and family.
it's devastating. you lose a loved one. it doesn't stop when the wake or the funeral is over. it has an impact on your life, your family lives, your loved ones and everyone that is a part of the loss of the individual.
so, these $12 million and finding its way into local community based organizations back into the community of staten island. it’s really commendable with the elected officials who are here understanding that this is one city and that staten island cannot be a forgotten borough when it's time to get the relief that they deserve. job well done from the electeds that are here for getting it done, job well done for the attorney general. and let's continue to fight opioid. thank you.
executive deputy commissioner avula: thank you very much, mr. mayor. i would like to ask the attorney general to say a few words.
new york state attorney general letitia james: so, the mayor's voice is a little hoarse this morning. he's come to the right place: can someone from rumc make sure that he gets treated?
thank you, and good morning everyone. we know that the opioid crisis has ravaged families here in staten island. we know that tonight and during the holidays that an individual will be missing from your family, will be missing from the table, the dinner table. we know that they will not be there to open up christmas presents.
we know that because as i traveled all throughout the state of new york, i met family members, i met individuals who lost loved ones. i held mothers and fathers over open caskets. i know what opioids has done, and these individuals weren’t victims.
a lot of them went in to see a doctor for a toothache, for back pain, and they used opioids as pain medication. and they used it repeatedly over and over and over again with no concern about these individuals because they were more concerned about profit over people.
and that's why i made a commitment that i would file the most comprehensive and extensive lawsuit against these drug manufacturers and distributors, and that's exactly what we did to the tune of $2.6 billion that will go to the residents of the state of new york.
and we're not finished yet. and of that $2.6 billion over a period of time, $12 million for now will be dedicated to staten island for treatment and education and prevention and beds: pediatric beds, geriatric beds, beds of all kinds for individuals who are struggling with this opioid crisis.
but it's also important to know that as we are viewing trends right now, we are seeing another disturbing trend: fentanyl and xylazine. what is xylazine? xylazine is a drug tranquilizer, which unfortunately, people are using it to lace their drugs, and unfortunately, it's resulting in the overdoses of countless number of individuals all throughout the state, which is why i wrote a letter, along with my colleagues across this nation, to urge congress to pass a law so that this, so that fentanyl can be regulated by the fda.
it's important that individuals understand that we've got to talk about these drugs and that we all must understand that it affects all of us. no matter what you look like, no matter where you live, all of us have been affected by opioids. and it's important that all of us understand that, and that we as elected officials respond to the needs of individuals and put politics aside.
and that's what we are doing today. i thank our mayor, i thank rumc, i thank all of my colleagues. but i particularly want to give one shout out who has been an advocate and who has called me consistently and repeatedly, and that is senator diane savino.
she's called me on a weekly basis: tish, what about staten island? what about staten island? and we responded.
i want to thank, again, your great district attorney for all that he is doing. i want to thank all of the elected officials who are here, and i want to thank all of the medical professionals and all of those who are on the ground who are responding to this crisis.
i use the law both as a sword and as a shield, and i will shield the residents of staten island against this crisis and use every power that i have in my disposal to address this crisis; and to, again, provide and make sure that your family members and your loved ones are with you each and every night. thank you and god bless you.
executive deputy commissioner avula: thank you so much, attorney general, for not just understanding the legal issues but really understanding that this is truly a people issue. i would now like to hear from the borough president, vito fossella.
staten island borough president vito fossella: thank you. good morning, everybody, and thank you dan and rumc folks for hosting us.
you know, the words devastation and tragedy and destruction are used very often, but those three words are very apt when it comes to someone who overdoses from these destructive, devastating and tragic opioids, fentanyl and whatever.
you know, dan was telling me a story recently how when he was coming in to work one day he saw this car speeding around him, and the guy flew through the door open to run into the emergency room. and he was thinking what, you know, what the heck is going on? and then he came to discover that the guy was running after his son who died, and didn't even get a chance to say goodbye.
and we know of parents who say, i'm just waiting for the phone to ring at three o'clock in the morning because i don't know if my son is going to make it. we all know somebody's been affected, and we all know somebody who's died. our goal and our job is to try to prevent that.
and a little back story as to why we're really here today is in the summer of 2022 when the city unveiled their plan, dr. ram raju came to me and said… and dr. raju, for those who don't know, actually ran health hospitals.
and he said, vito, this is not going to be good for staten island because we don't have any facilities and we're not going to get a penny. so, we asked a couple of times, and the answers were, no, you'll be fine, you'll be fine.
in september, we asked the three councilmembers to write a letter to the city — in september of 2022 — really no response. and at the september 11th memorial, tish james was there, and i asked her that we need help and without hesitation, she said, we're with you. and for the last year and a half, all these electeds behind me and some who are not here stood united to stand up for the people of staten island.
and i want to give credit to the mayor, because very often in government when the answer is no, people tend to circle the wagons and say, we're not doing it, we're not doing it. despite how wrong they may be, many of us have experienced that. but the mayor, eric adams, stood up and said, take care of staten island. so, thank you, mayor.
and to finally the healthcare professionals who dedicate their lives to saving people here in rumc, dr. brahim ardolic representing staten island university hospital, we thank you for your devotion to this community and we're not going away. thank you.
executive deputy commissioner avula: thank you, borough president, for both your leadership and your advocacy. i would like to ask da mcmahon to say a few words.
staten island district attorney michael mcmahon: thank you, commissioner, attorney general james, mr. mayor, our great borough president, my colleagues in government, to all of you gathered here today. what a great moment this is in the story of the opioid crisis in our country and in our hometown.
and if you think about that story, we know it all too well. you think of the young tottenville high school quarterback who went to a party and put his hand into a bowl of pills and took a pill and became addicted to opioids and ended up overdosing.
think of the firefighter who came home from work with a bad injury to his back and went to see a doctor and got too many of those oxycontin pills, became addicted, overdosed and died. think of the sanitation worker who did the same thing. think of the people who are on our streets, sometimes homeless, addicted to drugs and what it means to them.
and we've seen this story all across our country. we know that the overdose deaths continue to spike, over 112,000 people last year in our country alone. and the reason for that, the source of that was, as mentioned, the greed and the callousness of pharmaceutical companies like purdue pharma, the distributors like mckesson and others who thought only of money and thought only of greed.
and we see the impacts every day. and this is a story that affects our country but also affects staten island. and it could have been a tragedy, that story. it continues to be a struggle, it continues to be a 5‑alarm fire, make no… have no doubts about it.
but it is also a story of hope. it's a story of individuals coming together to say, no, we can do something better in this town. and that's the men and women who work in the district attorney's office, it's the men and women of your great new york city police department, mr. mayor. it's a story about the providers who are in this room today, people care about addiction, illness and understand that we have to remove the stigma and we have to get help. it's an illness like any other, and we have to get the help.
and it's a story of our pps led by joe conti, our great healthcare providers that here, coming up with programs like the hope program, like the hugs program, like the hotspotting program.
and so, you've touched on it, mr. mayor, that here on staten island the resources that now you and the attorney general are rightly — and we thank you so much for it — giving to us will allow us to make this story better, to make this story maybe not have a happy ending but have an end.
yes, we are now confronted. this year alone we suspect 141 deadly overdoses mainly now because of fentanyl. we are working together with a task force to come up with more solutions and more ideas to give to you and to give our attorney general and to give senator savino in particular, because i know she's got your ear, and she's got your ear, and we thank her for that.
she's got… by the way, she's got my ear.
she texted me six times today, you're late, your statement's no good. you're wearing the wrong tie; and by the way, you talk too long.
borough president fossella: i agree.
district attorney mcmahon: and the borough president's chiming in. but listen, you know that my speech here today, my words here today are because of the passion that we feel in staten island. we know that with treatment, education and prevention, with the resources, madam attorney general, that you fought for and that you, mr. mayor, are now delivering us here to staten island with your incredible staff.
and thank you to this bipartisan effort of our colleagues in government who never put politics before doing… well, maybe the day before and the day of election day, politics is tough here.
but who otherwise, as the mayor said and the borough president said, we do what's right for the people of staten island. this is a great chapter in the story of our fight to overcome this incredible challenge and to make sure that we keep the people of staten island safe and healthy. i am thrilled to be here. god bless you all. what a great day. thank you.
executive deputy commissioner avula: thank you so much, da, and thank you for reminding us that there are tools, that there are tools available to combat this crisis, and that's what this investment represents: an investment in those tools of prevention, treatment, recovery, harm reduction, that comprehensive service.
the next speaker may actually have diane savino beat. this assemblymember has contacted me numerous times a week, a day, a month, a minute. and so i am super pleased to give the mic to assemblymember pirozzolo.
state assemblymember sam pirozzolo: good morning, everyone. thank you. so, basically we did it. thank you very much. so, i'm going to give you a little bit, you know, we've heard about the tragedies and the sad stories, but i'll give you a little bit of a timeline.
but let's make no mistake that we would not be here today if it weren't for the attorney general and this lawsuit, so thank you. we especially would not be here today if it weren't for mayor adams.
i had the opportunity to have dinner with mayor adams in july, and he said to everyone, what is your… what are your top goals? my only goal was that staten island wasn't getting any money from this opioid settlement. and at the time the words forgotten borough come to mind, but i realized as we went through this process that it wasn't that staten island was a forgotten borough, we just didn't have the mechanisms in place that the city uses to distribute this money. so, if it weren't for the mayor saying yes, this never would have happened.
in addition, diane savino and deputy commissioner avula also, you know, she mentioned that i text a lot, i don't know if that's true. i have a political mentor who says to me that, sam, you've learned how to monetize your annoyance.
so, i don't know if that's true, but last night i was sending out some texts to people saying thank you, and one of the texts i got was, listen, we just decided to give you the money so you'd stop texting us. right? so, if that's the case, then let it be so.
my district is the 63rd district, which is the middle of staten island, but i am a native staten islander. i was born in the old staten island hospital. i'm born and raised here. so, regardless of where the district is, i am a product of staten island, and we live on an island. there's really nothing that i do, or any of my colleagues do, that are not going to affect the whole island.
so, also to give thanks would be to my colleagues that were behind us, and some of them before me. i mean, like borough president fossella said, it was last year, and as the district attorney said, it's been years that they have been fighting for this.
but it just happened that we were able to figure out that there was no mechanism, it's not that the city was intentionally doing this to us, but no one was pointing out that, hey, we have to find out another way.
so, thank you to my colleagues, and also i want to say thank you to some people here in the audience, because if it weren't for you standing behind us we wouldn't have had that voice. so, thank you for dr. conti, staten island university hospital. thank you terry troia. there was the ymca, is that you over there, jackie? yes. you know, there are all different, all different organizations.
district attorney mcmahon: adrienne and diane.
state assemblymember pirozzolo: where's adrienne and diane? how are you? okay, so. [cassidy, oasis], everybody, you know, [kamela, luke] is not here. is luke here?
oh, okay. i thought you were up in albany. so, again, yesterday he's in albany fighting, you know, fighting for this.
so, i like to use terminology which i call the voice of one. i or we may have been, you know, the tip of the spear that went to the mayor, but if it weren't for you all behind us giving us the information that we needed to bring forward to the mayor's office and to the deputy commissioner's office and to diane savino who's an assistant… advisor, i apologize, all right, we would not have gotten this done. so, thank you to you. because of you, we were able to help staten island with $12 million. thank you.
executive deputy commissioner avula: thank you very much, assemblymember. now we'll take some on topic questions for the mayor.
question: hi, mr. mayor.
mayor adams: how are you?
question: good, how are you? [inaudible] in staten island today. [inaudible] no congestion pricing, funny enough.
i wanted to ask, can we get some details about the hugs, the hope program? what do those programs look like? how does somebody get involved? how many people is the expectation that the $12 million will help, and for how many years?
mayor adams: the da has stated, i know 2,000 people went through the program but the da can talk about it. da?
district attorney mcmahon: yes. i'd be happy to, and we can provide you information. amanda wexler here is from my office and she'll be glad to do that. so, the hope program is an at-arrest offer of diversion if you're arrested for possession of narcotics, meaning that if you… and then go for an assessment you will then be diverted into a treatment plan made just for you.
and if you do that, then your case will be dismissed in 30 days and the case is sealed. and as the mayor said, over 2,000 staten islanders have taken advantage of that, no criminal record and have gotten in touch to treatment with all of the people who are here. and that's where this money will help directly.
hugs is when we know, and hotspotting is using an algorithm from the pps. when we understand that someone is likely to overdose because they're using, we go where they are, we knock on their door. we send a team and we try to intervene with them as well. and there have been hundreds of cases with that as well, and we're expanding that as well.
and we're very hopeful in the future that we will get a diversion center here on staten island that we can take people to make that connection. so, those are some of the things that are going, and the other programs, ms. wexler will give to you.
question: from the $12 million, how long do you expect to be able to use that? how long will those funds last?
district attorney mcmahon: well, it's my understanding that it's a three‑year allotment… a four‑year allotment, ah, i was counting four a year. so, it's a four‑year allotment of $3 million a year, that's $3 million that goes to these providers who are in the field doing the prevention, the harm reduction, the intervention, giving individuals counseling.
it's a tremendous boost to this effort here on staten island. we're extremely grateful to the mayor and the attorney general for it.
mayor adams: what the da is doing is really showing how we are reexamining the relationships in law enforcement. the goal is not incarceration, it's rehabilitation, and those who are dealing with substance abuse, to have them a sit in our jails and our prisons, you are not doing a service to them.
and so when you have a district attorney's office that is able to partner with the police department, our healthcare providers, you are seeing the system work. you're seeing a dismantling of the walls that prevented us from really coming up with real solutions.
and these are the successful programs we want to see continue to expand and grow city wide. there's a lot of hope in this program in that there are ways of putting hope back into the lives of people.
state assemblymember pirozzolo: may i please answer that question?
mayor adams: yes.
state assemblymember pirozzolo: so, just so everyone knows there to answer your question, this is supposed to be $3 million a year for four years. this is exclusively for staten islanders, okay? so, that's what's very, very important. the process is supposed to be an rfp process where grants are going out and everything is going to be reviewed to help staten island organizations provide the services they've had in the past.
actually they have to expand upon it, the way it's written, right? they have to provide different services, because this is new money coming in. and i'm very glad attorney general james said it, because we already know that the coffers are being filled with additional money.
and just so you know that deputy commissioner avula has already assured me that moving forward staten island will not have to have this fight again. okay? because she doesn't want those texts every day, every minute, whatever she said. so, moving forward, we should automatically be included in any additional opioid settlement disbursements. and if not, we're all here. thank you.
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